Hitachi Data Systems Redefines Unified Storage

Hitachi Unified Storage is First to Consolidate and Centrally Manage Block, File and Object Data on a Single PlatformSingle Unified Management Framework Extends throughout HDS Portfolio

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — April 24, 2012 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT/ TSE: 6501), today redefined unified storage with the new Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) and single management framework. HUS stores multiple data types with more flexibility and more balanced scalability than any other midrange solution. It helps customers manage their critical business applications and meet their growth requirements without compromising performance, scalability or cost efficiency. In addition, Hitachi Data Systems is announcing today that its entire hardware product portfolio, including the new HUS, will be supported by Hitachi Command Suite management software. As the first enterprise-class vendor to provide a single software management platform for all of its products, Hitachi Data Systems is helping its customers further reduce costs and complexity throughout the data center.

According to Sean Moser, vice president, Software Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems, “The roots of current unified storage products on the market today are based on the needs of smaller organizations that did not have the storage volumes, IT resources or budgets to acquire and manage separate platforms for block and file data. The traditional definition for unified management has focused on managing file and block on these general-purpose lower-end storage platforms. This all changes today as we bring to market the first enterprise-class unified storage solution. Hitachi Unified Storage helps organizations meet application availability and performance requirements with lower investment. Customers can deploy storage for all data types and easily grow to meet expanding requirements, while still meeting service level objectives for critical business applications.”

“IT organizations in mid-sized and large enterprises are struggling with a deluge of data and increasingly diverse data management needs. They require storage solutions that meet their growth requirements while simplifying operations, reducing the total cost structure, and quickly adapting to changing business needs,” said Richard Villars, vice president, Information and Cloud research, IDC. “Hitachi Unified Storage provides enterprises with a single foundation for efficiently managing block, file and object data without making trade-offs in performance, scalability or capacity utilization.”

Unified Without Compromise: Strength across File, Block and Object

Hitachi Unified Storage consistently and efficiently provisions, tiers, migrates and protects all data, regardless of type, throughout its lifecycle. HUS further saves costs with data efficiency capabilities such as thin provisioning and automatic tiering. Built-in automation optimizes performance and makes it predictable to assure customers that they will get the most out of their investment. Intuitive and easy-to-use software that comes with each system has been designed to simplify even the most complex environments.

HUS has the most balanced scalability in the industry. Unlike other solutions that scale only in capacity, HUS also scales by predictable performance, replicated data, block volume size and file system size. The benefit for customers is that the HUS platform will have a longer service life than competing products and be a better investment.

HUS is the fastest midrange storage system available today for block and file data access, enabling organizations to achieve performance goals at the lowest possible price. High-end storage functionality, such as page-based auto-tiering, is available with HUS to facilitate automated placement of data for the highest performance at the lowest cost.

The new Hitachi Application Protector, also introduced today, is an application-aware, snapshot-based data protection, backup and recovery software suite for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint environments. Integrated with Hitachi Unified Storage, Hitachi Application Protector lets administrators for each of these applications protect their data sets using familiar interfaces such as Microsoft Management Console. Application administrators can initiate backup and recovery jobs, and more easily meet service level objectives for critical business applications.

The HDS strategy for unified management is to abstract the complexities of the underlying storage environment to create a service-oriented model in which organizations manage storage as a service to their consumers, regardless of the nuances of the underlying physical devices that serve up the storage. This strategy requires a fully unified approach, which is provided only by HDS.

Unified management and control across all tiers of storage in the HDS storage portfolio: Enterprise and midrange systems, along with externally virtualized heterogeneous storage environments

Unified management across functions: Encompasses all the management tools needed to configure, analyze, mobilize and protect data; includes a unified business intelligence layer that adds the critical functions needed to become more service-centric

New Unified Features and Customer Benefits

Built on a heritage of market-leading innovation, Hitachi Unified Storage provides organizations with a reliable, dynamic and open architecture that lets them meet their service level objectives more efficiently, save costs and protect their long-term investments. HUS is supported by a proven services organization and a network of partners to help reduce operational and capital costs. HUS also simplifies virtualized application management and deployment for both block and file requirements, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, VMware View (VDI), and Oracle databases.(See related press release also issued today: “Hitachi Unified Storage Embraced by Partner Ecosystem”) Features and benefits include:

A*Star Computational Resource Center: “Hitachi Unified Storage has demonstrated significant improvements compared to the modular storage platforms of past generations. With today’s ever-changing and growing business requirements, a unified platform that is able to address block, file and content data; while being able to scale and perform at the highest level is of upmost importance to our organization. We believe that the new HUS has successfully addressed these challenges and have set a high benchmark for others to follow.” – Lai Loong Fong, deputy director

University of Utah Health Care: “We have chosen the new Hitachi Unified Storage to help ensurethat medical records and images are reliably backed up, whichis critical to ouroperations.Our backup windows have been significantly reduced as a result ofthe system’s powerful write throughputperformance. And we have saved on footprint and operational expenses through replacingfourseparate storage systems with a single HUS. The high density packaging leads to further power, cooling and floor-space reductions. Overall,theoperational cost savings will lead to a rapid payback on our investment.” –John Fagg,manager, Storage Management Services